Asquithian Warfare

Asquithian Warfare

Showing Why the Old Government in England Did Not Get Along With War.

By Lacey Amy.

From Saturday Night magazine 20 January, 1917, Toronto, Canada.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 25 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

AT last the seal is broken. Into Canada’s bewildered but loyal complacency that Britons never will be slaves one may interject a note that, up to a month ago, might have made that last hundred thousand a Utopian dream. The change of Government has opened one’s lips.

I do not believe that with Asquith as Premier, the Allies would have won the war, save by a starvation exacting almost as much from England as from Germany.

I am equally confident that, with Asquith’s Cabinet free from the beginning to follow it’s bent, we would never have won the war. Before it finally lifted him from the Premier’s chair with reverent gentleness, only public opinion had saved Great Britain from the depths of humility. And I give to the late Government full credit for the Empire’s one example of war statesmanship, its complete and wonderful financing of the Allies.

Canada has been fortunate in being spared the spectacle of Asquith’s persistent failure. Add to bereavement and business disasters the sum of the daily evidences that the late Government was utterly unable to grasp the seriousness of the war, and one may have some lot of what England has been passing through. Canada, judging by her Press, has seen only the big failures, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, the Dardanelles, and the rest of the ugly diplomatic round. England has shuddered with the certainty that even in the very foundations of victory the Government has been leaving holes that would sooner or later bring the entire structure down. .

I do not speak rashly in this. I came to England with every prejudice against the Government’s detractors, with every respect for Asquith’s marvellous capacity of a kind. I still retain that respect; but an intelligent Canadian, reared in an atmosphere of action instead of deliberation, knows that war cannot be waged adagio. And in movement of that kind alone lay Asquith’s strength.

I will not even touch on the large follies that have impressed themselves on the world to Britain’s eternal discredit. What Canada will find of most interest now is the side-issues here at the source of England’s might which reveal in an amazing manner the reasons why Lloyd George replaced the late master of circumspection.

Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the late Cabinet’s failure to grasp the awful seriousness of the war was in the recruiting muddle. There is no discredit in having tried voluntary enlistment, but there is in having delayed conscription until Germany had entrenched herself in France. Therein lies, only one of the proofs of the fatal hold of tradition in England. And when conscription was introduced it was built like a sieve. The conscientious objector crawled through the first hole. Labor, grandly as it has responded in parts, found a range of meshes large enough to escape the net. To relieve itself of one more war responsibility the Government left the enforcement of conscription in the hands of local Tribunals.

The farce in this was that each of these Tribunals knew personally every man brought before it for exemption, was dependent upon him for votes or business, was personally interested in many of them, and was always blinded by the spectre of local requirements. They had to pass on their own employees, on their personal friends, on their debtors and creditors, and many of them were made up of members out of sympathy with conscription or out of tune with the requirements of the war. Thus were ex­empted, for example, eligible young unmarried men like these: a professional billiard player, a comedian, a secre­tary of an organization, for fighting conscription, municipal employees in the most unimportant positions, a tie manufacturer, teachers who admitted their opposition to conscription and even their antagonism to England, a street gambler who posed as a fish porter, pugilists by the half dozen, an organist whose fingers might be stiffened by war. an undertaker’s coachman who could drive four horses, one with no other appeal than an unfaltering smile, a man who claimed to be a born coward, hundreds of Jews with extensive businesses which had grown from nothing, a man whose parents’ illiteracy would leave his brothers at the front without their weekly letter, horsemen, an ambulance driver, cabmen, a picture framer, a coach builder, a plumber, a Tribunal member’s chauffeur, and on and on.

THE strong young man with ingenuity defied the military. If all else failed he sought work in a munitions factory, was badged even after he had been denied exemption, and conscription passed him by. Thousands of them were hidden safely away in these factories or in “starred” occupations which they sought in extremity without an hour’s experience. Five thousand young men were finally taken from Woolwich Arsenal alone.

And the Government departments were equally funk-holes. Every one of them had its thousands. It was estimated that in Whitehall and other Government offices at the middle of 1916, two years after the war started, 50,000 men of military age were cuddled. The Cabinet heads stubbornly refused to oust them, although nine-tenths were engaged only in the simplest clerking.

Pullman Company secured exemption from the Adjutant-General because its employees were engaged in “carrying officers back and forth.” Big firms with hundreds of branches had their managers exempted, although individual businesses went to the wall by the thousands because their proprietors were called up. Badges were sent en bloc, by the Government without a moment’s investigation of those who were awarded them. So that porters and simple office clerks were all immune if the products of the firm were even in part considered war necessities. Every Government department had the privilege of granting badges, and it frequently happened that those whom the Tribunals refused to exempt were saved by badges sent by parcel post. The secretary of one of the departments most intimately concerned with the progress of the war badged 35 of his farm employees, also retaining nine fancy gardeners. In France exemptions ran to hundreds of thousands, said Lloyd George in an explosion of disgust, while in England they ran to millions—more than 3,000,000 men of military age.

Had every other source of labor been tapped there would be little to say, although loafing was the main interest of these slackers. But men of 35 to 40, with large families, were turned loose from exempted occupations to make way for the young unmarried men, until finally some of the Tribunals struck, refusing to send another man to the trenches until the scandal was aired. The result was a Man-Power Board that picked out a few here and there as a sop to public demand, but truckled completely to the original ideas that had held sway. For each department was jealous of its authority. Each refused to make the sacrifices it was demanding of the public. Last summer the Government declined to grant any Whitsun holiday—and promptly went off on a six weeks’ holiday of its own.

The matter of substitution was equally ignored except in public. Some weeks ago a critic of mine in Satuiuay Night indignantly wrote: “Does Mr. Lacey Amy actually expect sane and intelligent Canadians to believe that the War Office publishes its appeals in the English papers by way of a joke?” Anyone in England would smile at the indignation. It so happened that, under my direction, a qualified woman was at that moment going the rounds of the Government offices in response to the appeals, to prove their insincerity. I may tell her experiences some time.

While the newspapers were full of formal appeals, until at last they refused to publish them in face of such evident insincerity, thousands of women were offering their services in vain. And with the men it was the same. Substitution was the cry of the Government, and I have personal knowledge of many men of undoubted capacity who found it impossible to secure warwork, voluntary or pay. One, a little over military age, sons all killed in France, doing without effort his twenty miles a day, was refused by the recruiting offices, turned over to a Labor Exchange, and there informed there was nothing for him to do. Another approached twelve departments and was turned down. A citizen of fifty, with an income of $50,000 a year and abundant energy, was referred to a local Labor Exchange, one of those bodies formed to hoodwink the public. A man of sixty, famous for his strength, forty years experience in a large business, persisted until he was finally told that if he could get three others he could go to cutting down trees in Kent, although he had never handled an axe or a saw in his life. A ship’s plater, one of the most expert occupations in the world, discharged from the army for deafness and sunstroke at Mesopotamia, was sent out as a common laborer, although his previous employer pleaded for him. and the industry upon which England’s very life depends was languishing for workmen.

THE strange laxity of the late Government in the matter of interning Germans in residence in England is to some extent known in Canada. Not one German would have been put where he could do no harm had it not been for the public outcry, not one German business closed. Businesses that were announced as closed at the beginning of the war continued openly to operate under Government sanction for more than two years, not one being finally shut down until within the last few months when England almost rose in rebellion. The Home Secretary, Mr. Samuel, was concerned only in the defence of resident Germans. The ugly part of it was that the winding-up proceedings, continuing for more than two years in full operation, netted to the leading Government officials concerned a salary of $26 a day, and to the pettier clerk $24 a week. And some of these accountants were “winding-up” so many businesses that their receipts reached the staggering sum of $4,500 a day. Of course there was no rush about it

An official investigation—it is noticeable that the reports of these investigations are made public only now when the Government which ordered them to be made is out of power—has announced that there are 4,294 enemy aliens in prohibited areas in England with permits from the late Government.

Back of all this is merely delay, not treason: incapacity for appreciating the necessities of war, not deliberate carelessness. The English way of doing things is always irritatingly slow to a Canadian. Perhaps the medium would be happiest. I have in mind a so-called Canadian convalescent home opened in England under an English manager and an English matron. The simplest move required a fortnight’s deliberation—the purchase of a dish bowl, the making of the most obvious rules, the establishment of the simplest routine—and even a kitten’s name had to be taken under consideration for a couple of days. I can safely say that not a half dozen Canadians did not squirm under the deliberateness and procrastination of the late Government.

Officialdom was reeking with it. I am informed by Government contractors engaged on the manufacture of the very necessities of the struggle that they were unable to reach the ear of any responsible heads of the depart meats save through a series of underlings who were utterly incapable of grasping the points at issue. The pettiest Government official is unapproachable. A large shell order is delayed a week because some sudden hitch has to be straightened out through a long line of clerks and stenographers. “No gentleman could swallow his lunch in an hour,” is the snobbery and tradition that has been muddling the war. And eleven o’clock continued to be the opening hour for offices while the nation cried for haste—just as the large stores of London are still unprepared for business at ten in the morning.

The Government’s attacks on waste and extravagance were farcical in the extreme. Scarcely a thing was done save to plaster the city with huge signs: “It is bad form to dress extravagantly,” “Save gas, electric light, coal and petrol.” “Do not be extravagant at Christmas time.” The simplicity of a Government that would depend upon such measures is its own judgment.

THE Cabinet held up its hands in helplessness at the strife between the Admiralty and the Army. In the respective air services there was fierce competition in the open market for supplies, and the officers would not speak to each other. Long after the Admiralty had a waiting list for its ranks it refused to close its recruiting offices to young men who slunk away to them to escape the army, knowing that they would not be called upon for many months, if at all.

The entire muddle of the air service was unbroken until a few extremists, by making hysterical charges, roused the people. Zeppelins came and went with immunity, both here and at their aerodromes. A Board of Enquiry, presided over by the head of the service, spent its time browbeating the critics, so that only two or three of the more daring volunteered to give evidence. Another Board has now brought in a report that exposes some of the extreme criticisms while hitting the Government hard. At one time twenty-seven aeroplanes were consumed in the effort to get twelve over to France, and no enquiry was held. The very newest of England’s types of aeroplane was sent straight from England to a German aerodrome because it was entrusted, by telephoned orders from the War Office, to the care of a pilot and an observer who had never before flown to France. And wherein is the change? It is a strange coincidence that almost on the day my article, “Canada in English Eyes.” should have appeared in Saturday Night, the new Premier was announcing in the House in his first speech the co-operation of the Dominions in the councils of war. The Food Controller, whose appointment had been dallied with for weeks by the late Government, was named the transportation of supplies, deliberated upon for months by Asquith, was placed immediately in the hands of a competent shipping man. Labor whose every demand had been granted almost without quibble by the late Government, was firmly informed by the new Labor Minister, a Labor leader himself, that not a moment’s consideration would be given the demands of the striking boilermakers until they had resumed work; and they immediately took up their tools. Billboard appeal for economy became Government measures. Badges were withdrawn from semi-skilled and unskilled workers. The air services of both branches of war were amalgamated under one head.

And England is responding grandly, without a murmur, with a deep respect for the man who does things in wartime rather than deliberate how to present them in beautiful phrasing.

Lacey Amy in Saturday Night

W. Lacey Amy articles in SATURDAY NIGHT magazine

“Segregating the Canadians.” October 28, 1916, p.21.

“The Canadian Incubus.” November 11, 1916, p. 21.

“The Popular English Pastime: playing with food prices.” November 25, 1916, p. 25.

“The London Theatre.” December 9, 1918, p. 25.

“Crisis ad Infinitum.” January 6, 1917, p. 2.

“Asquithian Warfare: showing why the Old Government in England did not get along with the war.” January 20, 1917, p. 2.

“Doctoring - Men and Things: concerning the whys and wherefores of the report that condemned Col. Bruce’s report, and incidentally ‘whitewashed’ the Medical Administration in England.” February 3, 1917, p. 2.

“The Georgian Way: how the Little Welsh Premier has organized his Little Government for work.” March 10, 1917, p. 2.

“Looking for the Facts in the Face: how British people are meeting submarine piracy.” April 21, 1917, p. 2.

“How John Bull Is Tightening His Belt.” May 19, 1917, p. 2.

“Snags the British Government Strikes.” June 16, 1917, p. 2.

“How Food Control in Britain Fell Down: the reasons why Lord Davenport’s administration failed utterly - a lesson for Canada as to how not to do it.” July 14, 1917, p 2.

“Trying to Foil Air Raiders.” September 1, 1917, p. 2.

“The Conscientious Objectors: Great Britain has hundreds in jail, but thousands still at large.” September 15, 1917. p. 2

From

The Life and Opinions of William Lacey Amy

a Forgotten Canadian Writer

by

Claudio Murri 1985.

Other articles may exist. Perhaps there is an index to Saturday Night magazine?

The Canadian Incubus

The Canadian Incubus

By Lacey Amy

From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto, Canada, 11 November 1916.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 23 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

WE were tea-ing at the home of one of England’s illustrious titled men, five Canadians and an equal number of English people, who are making themselves especially agreeable to Canadian soldiers and workers. Among the Canadians was a woman whose name will probably be emblazoned in the Canadian annals after the war as one of the self-sacrificing, expatriated office staff of a certain Canadian organization in London.

Into the conversation entered the name of a Canadian woman well known in London through her husband, a friend of our English host. Instantly I noted the head of my compatriot worker rise, and into her eyes came the hard light of the woman-in-the-same-set. For a minute or two she listened to a desultory account of the other’s last visit to London and of a certain war work in which she is interesting herself back in Canada.

“Pooh!” she snorted at last. “I’d rather hold up a lamp-post in Piccadilly than be lady mayoress of—” (naming the home city of the one being discussed).

I believed her. It was neither the kind of remark nor the tone to accept to any extent other than its limit. The impression that entered my mind—and I am sure it came to our hosts much the same, for they were obviously ill at ease—was of a woman whose presence in London was not at all on account of the work in which she happened to be concerned, but whose work was a mere excuse for her presence in London. Either that or she was willing to sneer at her native land to suit her perverted idea of what would please her English friends.

A few days later I entered the building in which are situated the offices of the organization through which she will undoubtedly claim social distinction upon her return to Canada after the war. A complete storey distant from the offices a blast of noisy chatter in female voices convinced me that it was no place for a man seeking information. I went elsewhere.

There are in London to-day—all over south-eastern England in fact—three kinds of Canadian women: those who come as part of the household of a resident Canadian whose work is in England, those who were sent from Canada for the distinct purpose of carrying on necessary work for the Canadian soldiers, and those who wish to give the appearance of the second class. There are no acknowledged idlers. Oh, dear, no.

The onlooker might rearrange the classes into those who have an excuse for being here and those who are a nuisance. I am inclined to think he would include in the better the entire third class and those who, like the Canadian woman instanced, are at work only to be near the centre of the excitement, “in the swim,” without giving critics a chance to associate them with their idle sisters.

What is the number of Canadian women in and around London I could only guess, and others might guess differently. What Londoners guess is what counts for Canada’s fair name. I have before me a statement of a great London paper that “hundreds of thousands of Canadian women have followed their husbands to England.” Of course, that is worthy of Hearst since there are less than two hundred thousand soldiers and a few hundred doctors and other officials here. The value of the estimate is in its bulk in the London mind, the implied criticism of Canadian common sense and patriotism.

One cannot censure such an estimate. The Canadian woman is almost as conspicuous here as her other half, not in numbers, but in her ubiquity and in her evident away-from-home-and-hurrah look when she is not wholeheartedly at work. Canadian women are everywhere about London—in the restaurants, on the streets, in the theatres. The Savoy, the Cecil, the Carlton, the Piccadilly, the Regent Palace and the Strand Palace are favorite meeting grounds for the inevitable afternoon tea, to which the Canadian in London has taken like a boy to the jam cupboard. A certain section of the city, Russell Square, that used to be called the American section, is now turned over in name to the boarding Canadians. And, of course, at such a camp centre as Folkestone, Canadian women—were they not often too anxious, in this country, to eschew that to which they have been prepared for that which seems a la mode—could form a little Dominion of their own.

The newspapers of both sides of the water have endeavored to interrupt the stream—handicapped in their efforts now and then by some “sob-squad” artist, with the widowed-mother and weeping-wife story that dampens handkerchiefs, pictures me a double-dyed villain compared with whom Pharaoh was chicken-hearted, and entirely ignores the question that really counts. No one has a deeper sympathy than I for the woman left at home to mourn; nobody could be more eager for the Canadian in whose lots in England than the English people, if conditions permitted even a doubt. But it is as impossible to justify the presence in England of the useless Canadian woman—the one who neither works nor brightens the home of a resident husband—as it is to support the plea that is actually being made by her English counterpart. That the wives of the soldiers at the front should be allowed to visit their husbands at their pleasure. It is as difficult to supply England with the necessary food and sustenance as it is France, and yet I venture to doubt that any Canadian woman will support such a ridiculous proposition.

The root of the trouble has two bunches. One class, which places itself entirely beyond the pale, consists of those who see in England at this time the height of their marital dreams. The other has a vague idea that in England they will be able to spend the week ends with their husbands or sons. That is a folly which even the ordinary brain should appreciate. I do know of Canadian women coming to England to see their husbands and having to hasten back to Canada to do it. Rightly enough, the War Office cannot clutter up its usefulness by considering anything but the prosecution of the war and the quickest relief of the soldiers. By a special arrangement they have made it possible now for the wife to return to Canada with the husband—if there is room, and if she is willing to put up with the accommodation.

The wife who imagines that she will be in touch in England with her soldier-husband is going to have a rude awakening. I have beside me the letter of a Canadian woman in which she complains that, although she arrived in England in early June, she has not yet seen her husband. And there are hundreds like her. There is no such thing as leave since the Somme offensive began, nor is there likely to be much of it for the rest of the war. England has discovered that leave is a much more recuperative measure for the harassed enemy than for the driving Allies. Two years of dragging warfare has altered methods of actively prosecuting the war, one of the discoveries being that it is more disastrous to coddle soldiers than to press them. Brutal as that statement may be, there is no reason why it should be left to the post-bellum annals. The battalions with the best records are those whose commanding officers adopted measures that might appeal to the Prevention of Cruelty societies as inhumane. It is a question of driving to victory or lounging to a draw; and the wives, I fear, have nothing whatever to do with it.

The “sob-squad” argument I once read from a reputable Toronto paper on behalf of the visiting Canadian woman, that her husband’s reason was despaired of unless she took up her abode in England to comfort him during his short leaves, was merely a dramatic staging of proof that the man should be discharged rather than that the woman should be brought to England. Soldiers of that kind—and there may be some so weak mentally—are better at home.

The Canadian woman who has faith that her ability, her willingness “to do anything,” or England’s gratitude to Canada and her need of woman workers, will find a place for her had better disillusion herself in Canada among friends than in England among strangers. Ability counts little, willingness less. I could mention a certain Canadian home, started in England with great splash and publicity, “a Canadian home for Canadian soldiers,” uncontrolled by the War Office, where ability is the last thing desired. Philanthropy is merely another name for advertisement sometimes.

There is no work in England for Canadian women. There is no assurance, even if work is obtained, that it will be permanent. England does not want women workers, however badly she might need them. I may have more to say on this another time. Frankly, don’t believe the appeals which fill the English papers. As the editor of a London paper said to me; “that is only one of the War Office frolics.” I could give the disillusionizing experiences of some Canadian women with a sincere desire to do war work.

I pick up a single issue of “The Times” and find in its Personal Column these appeals, each costing the advertiser about two dollars and a half:

“Two ladies would give services in munition-workers’ canteen or hostel. Resident. Can pay board if necessary.”

“Lady would do volunteer work or charitable work of any kind, and pay her own expenses. St. John certificates. Average capabilities.”

“Volunteer war work—Two ladies would give three days weekly to canteen or other war work, paying own expenses. Not London.”

And yet every day the papers are burdened with a cry for canteen workers. In desperation many Canadian women have become what is called hospital visitors. I can assure Canadian readers that the average hospital visitor in England has undertaken a thankless task. One reason is that it is recognized as a mere filler-in of time for women who feel bound to justify themselves. The second reason is that ninety per cent. of the Canadian boys would as soon take a dose of calomel as face the average hospital visitor. I am prepared to hear clamorous protests at this. I can only say that the intimacy of my connection with the boys places me in a position to know. I have the word of hundreds of them, given in moments of frankness. Also I have seen scores of them deliberately turn their backs and feign sleep when the hospital visitor looms in sight. It is a delicate question which I am more willing to put in print, I will admit than in words to the visitors themselves.

There are other unpleasant surprises for the Canadian woman who comes here with the idea that everything will be rosy for her. Right from the start she has a narrow path to walk to evade a reputation many of her sisters. I regret to say, have justly earned. Every day I am forced to agree that Satan is still the fond old entertainer of the idle.

But she is going to find, too, that her preconceived ideas of the cost of living in England need revision. I gather from what is even more convincing than the Government statement that the cost of living has advanced sixty-eight per cent. since the war began, that the Englishman is bewildered with the climb of prices. Even if the Canadian woman is able to overcome her scruples in other directions, she should come prepared to pay at least fifteen dollars a week for board and one semi-furnished room in and around London; and at that it is of a class she would scorn in Canada. Those who have visited England in the good old days when the best beef was twenty cents a pound, eggs thirty-five cents a dozen, and bread eleven cents a loaf—when sugar was not a luxury to be prayed for at night with the other blessings of Providence—should have heard a sad Canadian housewife here telling me of being forced to pay nine cents apiece for fresh eggs a month ago. We avoid eggs for breakfast. The details of English living are worth a special article later.

The presence of idle Canadian women in England cannot, I think be laid to sentiment. In forcing themselves on a country which finds it more difficult than most people know to secure its supplies they are replacing the higher sentiment by the lower. The scores of Canadian girls who sally forth to England to marry, or who marry soldiers just before departure from Canada and thereby think to justify their presence here, I would hand over to a more biting pen than mine. When the newspapers and Governments of both sides of the water have failed to stem the flood is there nothing else can be done? There is sign of a budding sense of proportions in Canada but the season for buds is backward. Can’t we force them?

The Eternal Snob.

THERE are certain inherent tendencies of human nature that nothing will ever change. However much the forms may vary, the essence of them remains the same. They are as immutable as the leopard’s spots or the Ethiop’s skin. You may denounce them, jeer at them, or, if you happen to be a sentimentalist, weep over them, but so long as the earth is populated by men and women nothing you can do or say will have the very slightest effect. There is no cure for love-making, unreasoning self-sacrifice, or snobbishness, says Efemera, in “The Bystander.”

The snob like the poor, is always with us. Every age is afflicted with the particular brand of snob it deserves. Snobbishness, in itself, is no great evil, though some of the forms it takes may be both repellent and ridiculous. In some classes it consists in having a parlor, an entirely useless apartment generally, furnished in red plush, set apart for the purpose of showing that the happy owners are socially equal to, if not a cut above, their neighbors. Late dinner, in certain households, is another manifestation of the same ambition, and we all know the type of lower middle-class young lady who for snobbish reasons would rather do anything than demean herself with housework—because housework is not reckoned genteel by the social luminaries of her set.

In the hallowed days of the Book of Snobs this was the distinctive mark of snobbishness, but times change, and a number of new variations have sprung up. The war and the system of voluntary recruiting brought in patriotic snobbishness which forbade any self-respecting girl to show herself in public with a man not garbed in khaki or navy-blue. A healthy manifestation, with which I, for one, have no quarrel, though in the case of men rejected by the military authorities some undeserved hardship was unavoidable. There is no reason why every nice girl should not love to be seen with a sailor, or a soldier. Who wouldn’t?

Another laudable form of the snobbish instinct is the desire to be thought to be connected with some kind of war work—that is, when it leads to some useful occupation. I hold no brief for the “war-work” which consists solely in selling flags in smart hotels and fashionable West End thoroughfares, or in getting up and taking part in entertainments from which no one in their senses, whole or wounded, military or civilian, could derive either profit or diversion, or which, on the plea of amusing our heroes home from the Front, beguiles them into expenses that many of them can ill afford.

After all, the wish to rise in the social world, or, at least, to appear to have risen, is a very natural one. Very few people whose position is not so assured as to defy criticism are entirely free from it. Through all time every class has sought to ape the customs and manner of living of the class just above it. Not a bad thing, for the whole standard has gradually been raised. This is particularly true in democratic, or, rather, plutocratic, countries, where everyone may hope to rise. Again, very few persons object to being envied, and an easy way to achieve envy is to shine in the reflected glory of smarter or wealthier friends.

That sort of snobbery is an insult to the real worker; and it is own sister to the particular brand evolved by the period in which we live—the kind of snobbishness that obtained before the war and has continued in full swing ever since. The old-fashioned snob wished to associate with his or her social superiors, or at least to appear to be in some way connected with them in some semblance of equality. The snobbish woman fawned upon ladies of title and position, and in imitation of their patronage of art and artists took to unearthing lions of her own, where-with to amaze her friends and neighbors, not to mention raising envy in their gentle breasts. Anything that could roar gently and wear some semblance to a lion’s skin was good enough. The poor Christian who had no lion to boast of was indeed to be pitied.

In the end the whole thing became a frantic race for notoriety. The snobbish woman who could not manage, upon some pretext or other, to get her name and photograph into the illustrated papers might as well be dead. However cheap the advertisement, it must be obtained at all costs. Anything has grown to be good enough, any means legitimate. As persons of established position and real lions are either scarce or not sufficiently available, Madame and Mademoiselle Snob have recourse to the merely notorious. All that is wanted is some excuse to appear in the limelight, how, when, where, and in what company does not much matter. Dignity, social or personal, counts for nothing—how should it? When Madame or Mademoiselle Snob arranges complacently to appear in some public performance with favorites, or even only notorieties, of the footlights, does she do it because the stage appears to her the most desirable career, or because of great friendship and admiration for the a fore-mentioned favorite, or simply because of the advertisement? It is true that the sacred cause of charity is generally invoked as an excuse, but charity has been known to cover a multitude of—well, let us say, indiscretions.

Segregating the Canadians

Segregating the Canadians

By Lacey Amy

From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto, Canada, 28 October, 1916.

Digitized 22 September 2017 by Doug Frizzle for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

With thanks to Irene Kuhirwa, and Robert Higgins from the Dalhousie University Library.

FOR the past few days a section of the London press has been in throes of anxiety concerning the rumored decision of the Canadian authorities to place the Canadian wounded in a “concentration area,” in other words, to treat them in hospitals of their own instead of scattering them through the country in Imperial and in pseudo-Canadian hospitals.

The protest was started by Lady Drummond, whose work in the offices of the Red Cross has earned her a right to speak. In a long letter to “The Times” she quotes Sir Robert Borden’s early-war utterance on the “immense advantage of the association” of the soldiers of the Empire, and a similar opinion from Mr. Arthur Balfour. To that she adds a vague declaration of “a General Officer” that “Canadian soldiers wish to be treated like soldiers of the Empire and not like anything else.” Later came a letter along the same lines from Mrs. Goodcrham. also a high official in women’s Empire work.

“The Times” and another Northcliffe paper, as well as one or two others, took the matter up editorially, always adhering to the protest side. There followed letters from a Canadian honorary Major connected only with the “Eye- Witness” phase of active service, from a French-Canadian civilian, who saw fit to compare such action with the Indian reserves in Canada, from an unnamed officer—but not one to date from the only person concerned, the Canadian private.

There are some features of the discussion that impress a Canadian in England. In the first place the question is so essentially a domestic one for Canada that it is difficult to justify the interference of the London papers. That they entered it honestly is no doubt true, but when it is known that they consistently refused publication to a number of statements of the other side, the existence of some other motive is apparent.

It is remarkable that the protests come only from those whose connection with the Canadian soldier is but general. Lady Drummond is too busy, I am sure, to get out among the Canadian Tommies for their personal opinions; her sphere is too large for that. The Canadian “Major’s” experience on Sir Max Aitken’s staff, can scarcely be said to make him an authority—especially as most of his life has been spent in England—and even a Canadian officer is not expected to discuss in a friendly way with his privates their preference in hospitals.

A detail that puzzles me is that Lady Drummond herself is concerned with a “segregated” branch of an organization, devoted exclusively to Canadians. Mrs. Gooderham is the much-appreciated donor of a hospital for Canadian officers. The “Major” is connected with a segregated end of the news service. But poor Tommy isn’t expected to have anything to say about his segregation so long as the officers may have their exclusive hospitals, the Red Cross its exclusive Canadian branch, the publicity service its exclusive Canadian staff.

It does not require, I think, more than a glance to appreciate the mistake of discussing in London papers a matter of policy so essentially Canadian. Its very essence implies a comparison between the virtues of Imperial and Canadian hospitals, treatment and methods. To Canada it is an important question for her private settlement.

Personally I can speak from an intimacy with the Canadian wounded denied the protestants. The Canadian Tommy, in my experience, is not apt to express himself freely either to women or to officials of any kind. I am fortunate enough to be neither.

And this is my unqualified statement: In intimate conversation with many hundreds of Canadian privates I have not heard one express himself otherwise than preferring treatment in Canadian hospitals. And it is a favorite topic of conversation among them. I am willing to accompany any opponent of segregation to any hospital in England without previous preparation and accept the verdict of the Canadian patients. The result would be somewhat staggering to those whose vague ideas of Imperial advancement overtop their consideration of the wounded. Apart from those Canadians whose residence in Canada has not been long enough to break the bonds of the Motherland, I doubt if five per cent would not favor segregation.

The reason is apparent enough, one would think. Let any Canadian at home imagine himself sick in England. Would he not prefer to lie among his friends, to be treated by those who understand him and whom he understands? Does any civilized nation urge the casting of its sick to the care of strangers when they can be as effectively treated at home?

Did the protestants see, as I have seen, scores of times, the flood of joy that comes to the face of the wounded Canadian in an Imperial hospital, when a Canadian voice sounds in his ears, they would realize that there is a homesickness in illness four thousand miles from home, that is unknown to health. I have visited Canadians in the finest London hospitals, where their treatment was perfect, who have almost wept with pleasure when they discovered that I even knew their home towns, or a friend, or an officer of theirs. I am willing to admit that the Canadian officer in a London hospital, his wounds on the mend, may prefer the opportunities afforded by an Imperial hospital for extended entertainment. But there is woe of that for the private.

There are many more reasons for segregation than the wishes of those whose happiness of body and mind should be our first consideration. -The Imperial hospital, in plain fact is not suited to the Canadian, admirable as it is for the Imperial soldier. The hours, numbers and quality of English meals are disturbing even to a Canadian in health. At Epsom Camp, where the Canadians predominate, where Canadian officers are in charge, but where the Imperial War Office is in control, the afternoon meals are at 4:30 and 8 p.m. And the average Canadian private longs for his good old sapper from five to six. I have heard Canadians complain that the constant succession of meals at an Imperial hospital made them unable to eat.

There is, too, a difference between the Canadian and the Imperial nurse. It is admitted—I have it from some of the biggest English doctors at the front—that the Canadian nurse stands alone. She comes from a different level of society, as a rule, is paid enough to make a lengthy and complete training worth while; and, of her Canadian patient and his whims. But there is, understand, no fault to be found with Imperial nurses. I could not but feel regret that the grand Ontario Hospital, at Orpington, provided by Canadian money with the best of doctors and nurses and equipment, should be enjoyed by Canadians to only about a fifth of its capacity. (My figures do not pretend to be exact, but are near it.) And away off in lonesome semi-isolation are thousands of Canadians to whom Orpington would be home. There does seem something wrong in depriving our boys of their friends for the sake of Imperials and Australians who would be quite as happy elsewhere.

It is admitted here that the Englishman does not know how to handle the Canadian. The English Tommy is a different creature, brought up to different treatment, accustomed to the galling class distinctions that exist here. It is not lack of sympathy which attempts often to apply the same methods to our boys.

And there are many reasons whose discussion even in Canada would be unwise. I need only say that they are matters of temperament, moral standards and discipline. What reasons the authorities may have as affecting administration and economy are for them to consider.

And now to approach the question from the only argument of the protestants. Their sole contention is that a mingling of the units of the service is good for the Empire. My own experience has been directly opposite. In mixed hospitals the Canadians, Australians and Imperials mingle so little that I have never yet talked to a group not composed entirely of one or another. It is notorious that the Canadians and the Australians have no great affection for each other, and association only increases the division. There is, too, such a wide disparity in the pay of the different countries that human nature cannot view it with equanimity. The shilling-a-day Imperial is not likely to be impressed with the justice of facing the same danger for one quarter the pay of the Canadian and one sixth that of the Australian.

The very kindness of the English people has brought dissention into many an Imperial hospital. I know one, at least, where the Imperials dub the Canadians “mother’s pets,” or similar terms. Twice a day English visitors call with motors for the Canadians and ignore their own soldiers. It is an injustice far which the Canadian is in no way to blame. For the Canadian soldier in England is a much feted man. The result is doubly serious—an envious Imperial, a somewhat spoiled Canadian.

The very atmosphere of a hospital is antagonistic to an improvement of relations. A sick man is an intolerant one, and the slight differences in temperament and training becomes tremendous to lads in unhealthy condition of mind and body. A Canadian admires the English soldier in the field; in the hospital they see through magnifying glasses each other’s smallest uncongenialities.

The discussion simmers down to the purpose of hospital treatment, even if the contentions of Imperial theorists be true. Is the purpose of the hospital to advance some speculative Imperial interest of the distant future or to give our wounded boys the best treatment we know of? Is it to use the wounded for ulterior motives or to make them happy or contented? Must our war hospitals become further sacrifices for the wounded? In all reason is it to be expected that a sick boy is as happy among strangers as among friends? There is good reason for to segregation. It has been declared by more than one London paper that the Imperial soldier is improved by association with the Canadian. My personal opinion js that our boys are out here to fight, not to evangelize during their off hours. Giving one’s life is about all to expect of a man at one time.

I am gravely anxious that nothing I have said should be interpreted as a slur on Imperial hospitals. I have heard no more adverse criticism of them than of our own. A Canadian in such a hospital is sure of the best attention available, as the Imperial is in ours; the Empire’s facilities are a unit in that. Neither do I impute to the London papers more than an understandable selfishness which they do not view as meaning any sacrifice to us. Canada can never say that England has not been appreciative. Indeed, to the strict Imperialist England’s almost extreme kindness to Canadians implies that which we Canadians do not agree with—that our participation in the war has been a favor, an unexpected sacrifice, an expression of friendliness justice would not have demanded. The Canadians who have protested against concentration are so seriously convinced of the theoretical righteousness of their claim that they have neglected, I fear, to consider the subject from the standpoint with which one can become acquainted only by the closest intimacy with the soldiers.

Most people are more concerned about the war than about advertising Canada through our wounded. To blazes with Imperialism and Canada’s boom in 1917 until we’ve won the war that settles the existence of Empire!